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I’m not sure how this month’s appointment with the WC doctors is gonna go. 😕 I think I’m actually seeing Dr Walter this time, when it was the new guy that I had the in-depth discussion with about the state of my treatment last month. Regardless, since the WC insurer is coming at me with the shenanigans again, the conversation will have to revolve around that rather than the stuff that I started bringing up last month.

I’ve got to be careful, because it almost feels like a “trap” that WC could use against me, but this month I have to start discussing possible alternatives for the meds that I’m taking right now. Because if they are somehow able to weasel out of paying for what I’m currently taking, the cost of two of those medications would simply be too much for me to continue taking them long term. 🙁 That’s where the “trap” part comes in.

When I start discussing more affordable potential alternatives for the meds I’m currently taking, I want it to be clear with my doctors and in my records that I have no desire or intention to make any changes now… and that the research and discussion is really just to act as my parachute if I get pushed out of the plane. But I can see where my fear of being forced to pay for my own meds, which has made me research cheaper (but likely less effective) alternatives, means that I now know that there are cheaper alternatives, so they’ll probably think that they have the right to force me to change to them – despite my preference to keep taking the ones that I’ve been taking. 😏 Heh… I know, that sounds a bit convoluted, but it basically make sense, no?

But until I’m able to discuss this with them, I know that I’m just taking barely-educated shots in the dark when it comes to what might or might not be suitable replacements. 🎯😎 I mean, even though I know that Lyrica has very specific actions – at its most basic level I know that it is considered an anti-seizure / anti-convulsant medication… so that’s where I start looking. 🤓📚 And now I have four or five medications that I think could be good replacements… but for all I know, even though they’re anti-seizure, they may have totally different actions – and ones that aren’t even close to being applicable to my situation. 😒

So for now that’s all I can really do… look for “close” meds and make sure there are more positive side effects than negative. Then I’ll just hope that I’m actually on to something, and that information can be put in my back pocket until it is needed. Between now and then I just have to figure out how to condense all of this crap down into a tolerable three to four minutes. 😳⏱👨🏻‍⚕️ Gotta impress the importance of this on him, while also not rambling so much that my point gets lost in the noise. I’m better at that than you’d think, actually… it just doesn’t seem that way here because I know I can go on and on about something and it doesn’t matter, since hardly anyone reads this blog anyway. 😏🤷🏻‍♂️

We’re down to about a week-and-a-half before my surgery. 😳 And let me tell you, I’ve been dealing with some serious anxiety issues since the beginning of this past week – and I’m finding it hard to shake. 😥 I’m right on the edge, always, and the slightest thing will push me over into labored breathing, chest pains, dizziness, etc. 😟 So while it might make me “difficult” in some people’s minds between now and my surgery, I’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep my anxiety levels low, or at least unchanged if I’m still managing to hang on to being okay.

It’s kind of embarrassing, but I honestly need to keep myself in a mental health bubble for the next 10 days. 😒 I don’t want anything to happen that will risk me not being able to have the surgery when scheduled, and going to the ER for a panic attack with severe chest pains probably wouldn’t help that cause. 😕 Now, I am gonna tell the doctors and surgeon everything that I’ve experienced up to that point, before I go in, because I absolutely want them to know… but yeah, right now is not the time for me to deal with anything that I don’t absolutely need to deal with.

Cassi helped with that over the past couple of days. 🤷🏻‍♂️😏 I went and got her on Thursday after she got off work, because she had two days off in a row and wanted to spend them here with me. ☺ We never figured out how to make our “couple” relationship work, but boy are we good at being each other’s “person” in times of need. And it’s because neither of us need much… just the distraction from our respective lives that’s somehow provided by just being in each other’s presence.

As for what we did over those two days… there’s really not much to talk about. We just plop down in the living room, turn on Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix, and just sit with each other and watch, talk, eat mac and cheese… heh… just “normal” stuff that doesn’t add to the anxiety. The only times it got a little rough for both of us was when one of the episodes would be about thyroids or cancer and the results. Probably shouldn’t have watched those particular episodes, but it’s also good to think about everything realistically, all of the potential outcomes – and letting myself cry a little bit and be scared with her… it was much better than doing that same thing by myself. 🙂

So yeah, the last couple of days were really nice, and really needed… and today, well, I’m calling it “a day off” since I don’t intend to do much (if any) communicating with anyone, and instead focus on things that I just personally need to do before it’s time for my surgery. 😊 The doctors and surgeon haven’t give me any reason to worry about the surgery. None. But you know how it is… you still wanna kinda get things in order, just to give yourself that peace of mind. And doing that sorta thing makes me feel better… makes me feel productive, which is something I always aim for.

I’m finally sending up the white flag and giving in to this nerve twinge thing that I’ve got going on. After talking to Dad, Cassi, and Genesee about it, and after suffering with this infuriating pain for the better part of a week, I’ve decided that I better go get it checked out. 🤕😟 Gen worked at a local doctor’s office when she was still living around here, so she’s possibly got an “in” with a couple different chiropractors. She’s gonna call tomorrow and see if she can get something worked out for me… oh, and I decided to try a chiropractor before the ER for a number of reasons. 🤨 Besides, the ER is still there if it turns out that a back doctor can’t help me.

Rather than sitting around all day and letting my frustration and anger build, I’ve decided to just stay in a comfortable seated position on the floor and get some work done… while watching a bunch of YouTube videos about stuff that gives me the “goody” feels. 😏 (History about Atari, Sega, Samantha Fox, Commodore, Jane Child, Nintendo, Klonoa, etc.) As for the “work” part… just a few minutes ago I printed out the final versions of my will, living will, health care directive, final arrangements, and a durable power of attorney for my finances. 😯😃🤓

Heh… no… I don’t expect to be going anywhere anytime soon, but I’ve had all these documents about 90% done for a while now. 🧐 So I just had to check the details and make a few tweaks, and now I just need to seek out a couple of witnesses and visit the notary at my bank. 👩‍👦👨🏻‍⚖️ Oh, and there will be no more sleeping in my bed until I get this nerve problem sorted. 🙄 My dumb ass… I knew it was a trap… but my bed can be so comfortable, and I wanted a good night of sleep so badly… but nope, constant pressure on that area = a bad idea, so it looks like I’ll be sleeping in the recliner until further notice.

I keep reminding myself how much worse it could be. 😳 I try to put myself in the shoes of the folks who still have to go to their jobs and put in a full eight hours while dealing with this pain. Sure, a TENS device helps mask the pain, but that’s no way to spend your day… working for “the man” while worrying about a)nerve pain randomly zapping you, and b) the TENS unit randomly zapping you. ⚡😣⚡ So, yeah… just trying to make the best of the day.

No real change in the past couple of days, and I’m starting to get restless. 😒 I’m sitting here, keeping it in neutral, but also wanting to do stuff around the house… anything other than just sitting here. 🤕 But then I stand up and take a few steps and it knocks that motivation right out of me. So I’m gonna continue to take it easy and just work on things that I can take care of in the immediate area. Sitting on the floor with my back right up against the heater is helpful, and I can pop open the laptop and spread out any paperwork type shit that I want to work on… 🤓💻📝 so I guess that’ll have to do for now.

The mailman stopped here today though (Sunday… weird) to bring a couple of goodies that I ordered the other day. They aren’t even goodies for me, but it still made me happy to see them arrive. 😃📦📬 Now, I’ve been out of circulation for a long time when it comes to most of my friends, but Brantley and Desiree both have a birthday this week – so I wanted to get each of them something so they don’t think that I’ve forgotten about them.

Bri and her family have Indiana roots, so I got him an Indianapolis Colts wallet. 🐎🏈 Now, he’s only four, so he’s not gonna be all “Woohoo!“ when he opens it – but hopefully mama will teach him how to carry important things in it and tell him how “grown up” it will make him. 😊 I also unsealed the packaging, stuck a $20 in the wallet, and sealed it back up again before I wrapped it… so that should be a nice “extra” surprise.

I’ve been anxiously waiting for the weekend to get here. 😐 While technically the day of the week doesn’t matter too much when it comes to my life, right now I’m using these “weekend” days as a crutch for my struggles of the moment. 😟 I’ve had a string of challenging days which have gotten progressively worse, mostly because I’m dwelling on a few things that I’m incapable of doing at the moment. Things that other people are somewhat counting on me to be able to do. 😬 No matter what it might be, I hate when I can’t be “reliably reliable” for my friends or family… so while I do continue to work on myself, I really needed this weekend so I could chill and tell myself “Just take it easy on yourself for a couple of days. It’s the weekend.”

Even having said that, it’s only partially effective, so my brain took it upon itself to engage in other distractions. Twitter is always a “go to” place for relatively irrelevant engagement. It seems most of the world goes there to loudly and/or angrily broadcast their opinions (often barely grounded in facts, if at all) and I usually end up trying to educate the exceedingly ignorant, insulting, and condescending of the lot. I know the odds are slim that I’d ever get any of them to think beyond their narrow view of reality… but like I said, it’s more distraction than crusade. (Plus it lets me act like an asshole to those that deserve it. Everyone needs that outlet sometimes… 🤔)

Lots of discussions about gun control and the Parkland kids, talk about the recent military engagement in Syria and the potential consequences… 🤓 but then somehow I got diverted towards more random/fun Twitter and Google searches. I think it started with things about Atlantic City, since I’m considering a trip there sometime this year, but then I ended up looking through local auction listings – which switched my brain over to straight nostalgia mode. 😊

One of the first things that I came across (which was weird, since I was just wondering about it a few days ago) was a vintage “Poosh-M-Up” pinball-ish type game… one that my Dad had when he lived here at this house. 🤗 It’s funny, one of those things where my memory of the game and the location are inseparable. I’m assuming my grandparents originally bought it for him, but then I ended up playing with it once I was old enough. 👦🏻 But yeah, such a random thing to accidentally come across… and there’s actually quite a few varieties of this game, and I plan on reading about the history of them all. 🙂 I never considered there’d be a bunch of ’em out there like this.

This local auction though, it has several items that I’m kinda interested in. 😯 That pinball game, old Atari game consoles and computers, other misc old toys of my era… and even though it’s in Mt Vernon, that actually motivates me to go a little more – since it’s a sleepy little town and there might not be many people that show up to outbid me. 😁 So after looking up that stuff on eBay, it made me think of other old games that I had when I was a kid, so of course I started looking up some of those things as well. I know that I always threaten to do an entire blog entry devoted to pricing toys from my personal childhood, but I really think that I’m gonna do that later tonight if my brain remains in its current happy place. 😋

It looks like I can just count on one week out of every month being horrible thanks to the runaround I get regarding my medication. 😒 A full one-quarter of my current existence on this planet, already set aside for fuckery and feeling physically and mentally miserable. 😣 So, starting this month, I’m gonna have to start rationing – so that way when there are extended delays in getting stuff approved, I won’t be going completely without and feeling the affect of that accordingly.

I don’t even have the energy to get into it. 😔 I’m just hoping that it doesn’t mean that I lost my court hearing weeks ago. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I still haven’t gotten any paperwork on it, but I’m guessing the magistrate is probably close to making a ruling if he hasn’t already. But yeah, when I’m already having a hard time functioning like a human, knowing that I’ll lose a week each month like this certainly doesn’t help matters.

But anyway… in an attempt to not think about that for a while tonight, I put my phone on airplane mode and set up a short time-lapse shot. I think the elapsed time was actually about two hours, but it plays out in a minute or so. I used an ISO of about 1200, an exposure of 1/3 of a second, with digital light trail enhancement of 3 seconds. 🤓 I’m actually fairly pleased with the result, although I’ve already thought of what adjustments I need to make next time so there’s less grain, brighter stars, and longer light trails.

So yeah… this is just another thing I have to adjust for, the same way that I need to adjust the amount of shit that I do when I’m feeling good – since I know that too much moving around will screw me up. 😐 Meh… it’s almost too hard to explain how complicated it actually is – the stuff that I can actually somewhat control – so when stuff that I can’tcontrol gets added on top of it… yeah, things start to get bad bad. I’ll figure it out. Eventually. But hey, that video is kinda neat, no? 🙂

(I might try to capture the movement of just the stars next time we have a new moon.)

This is difficult. I have to go to court in about a week, in regards to the workers comp stuff that I’ve been dealing with for over a decade now. 😒 I have access to a crapload of documents that are directly related to this case, as well as information from past cases that may provide precedents that could either help or hinder the arguments coming from my side. 😐 But in this instance, for this appearance, all of that information that I could start digging into… it wouldn’t really do me any good, and that’swhat’s difficult. 😣 Telling myself to just “let it go” because the attorneys are gonna attorney.

This particular phase has been elevated, because rather than just being about me trying to get a medication or treatment approved – this case is actually about whether all of the “powers that be” have been playing by the rules. 😯 I don’t want to get into too much detail, so it’s hard to explain it, but that’s why my input isn’t going to be needed. Because it’s more about making sure that every “T” was crossed, every “I” was dotted, and every rule was interpreted and followed in a way that should meet the court’s approval. 😬 There really is quite a bit riding on this.

So I could memorize every related case that came before mine, I could write an impassioned speech that recounts the trials and tribulations of this frustrating process over the entire past decade… but none of it would matter, because none of it is required. 😕 None of it would even be welcomed (at least as far as it seems to me) because this time it’s all about the proper administration of my claim. 👨🏻‍⚖️ To be honest, I’m not even sure why I have to be there at all.

So yeah, I’m a bit anxious… one of those situations where the cards have already been dealt, but we have to wait a week to see who’s hand comes out on top. 🙇🏻‍♂️ It’s really starting to look like this might happen, too. It’s been delayed a few times for various reasons on both sides, but with the information dump that has happened and the lack of anything promising in regards to a settlement, I think it’s actually gonna go down on the date as planned this time. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Time to tighten my belts and keep my hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.

(Did I mention that the trial date is two days after my cervical spine injection? 💉😨 Yay? 😅)